


THE DARKEST HOUR

by Mikkeneko



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, But with a happy ending, Hawke is not having a good day, Legacy spoilers, M/M, Terminal Illnesses, Warden secrets, and then Justice, kinda cheesy sorry, the first rule of Blight Club is don't talk about Blight Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 07:44:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4255071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke has just gotten some very unpleasant news about his boyfriend's life expectancy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	THE DARKEST HOUR

**Author's Note:**

> Reikah asked me for "Hawke/Anders fluff," and this is apparently too much for me, so she amended it to "or maybe Justice fluff," which was slightly more doable. Set after the Legacy DLC, though no direct spoilers for it.

 

Hawke stood in the darkened hall, cold stone and empty air pressing all around him. The fires had long since burned down to coals and then to hot ashes, and he hadn’t bothered to bank them. What time was it?  _Late,_   that was all Hawke knew. Late, late, and too late, in every sense of the word.

 It had already been long dark by the time he and Anders had gotten home, returning from that ill-fated journey to the Deep Roads. It had already been midnight when they got into a screaming argument – well. Hawke had been screaming, at any rate.

_“Why didn’t you tell me?” he shouted. Brimming over with grief and pain, and Anders had the nerve to shrug._

_“It never came up,” Anders said. Hawke grabbed him by the shoulder, and Anders ducked away. “What was I supposed to say? Good morning, Garrett, breakfast is bacon and eggs over easy and by the way, I’ve got ten years to live?”_

  _“This isn’t a joke!” Hawke hissed._

  _“Why not?” Anders shrugged again. “Everything else is, to you.”_

 That hurt, that cut deep; he’d always known Anders could have a vicious tongue when he wanted to, but it had never been aimed at him before. He’d hit back, accusing Anders of all sorts of things – liar, cheat, death-seeking – until Anders had finally been roused enough to snap back.

  _“Why are you acting like this was something I **chose**?” he snapped. “I was conscripted! Although even if I had, given a choice between a lifespan measured in years and one measured in days, it would have pretty much been a no-brainer, wouldn’t it?”_

  _“Years –” Hawke’s breath clogged in his throat, he could barely draw in air. “How long do you have? No more dodging around the question. Tell me the truth!”_

  _Anders wrapped his arms around himself, hands hugging his elbows, and turned away. “…Thirty years is what the senior Wardens say,” he said. “But… that’s for Wardens who live during peacetime. It’s different during a Blight. Contact with the Darkspawn… spending time in the Deep Roads… that accelerates it. Ten… Ten years is what they say a Warden can expect to live during a Blight.”_

  _Hawke was numb. Actually numb, he couldn’t feel his face and fingers except for shooting pains like pins and needles. He’d been feeling for so long that he just couldn’t any more. “And you became a Warden in…”_

  _“Nine thirty-one, Dragon,” Anders said in a monotone._

  _“Six years…” Hawke swayed on his feet. “Oh, Maker, four years left…”_

  _“You don’t know that, Garrett,” Anders said, miserably trying to make the best of it. “It could be four years, it could be twenty-four. Or we could both die tomorrow. Things in Kirkwall being what they are… I never really thought I’d live to see the end of the year.”_

  _“Don’t say that!” Hawke snapped, panic flaring back up._

  _“I guess…” Anders sighed. “I thought it would never come up. One way or another.”_

 Hawke had shouted more, at that, venting a storm of grief and betrayal, furiously trying to rile Anders up in return. But the more he pushed, the more Anders had just withdrawn into himself, until finally he cut off Hawke’s tirade with a flat snarl.

  _“What do you think this will do, Garrett?” Anders demanded. “Do you think that if you can somehow win this argument, it will change things? Go back in time and undo my Joining? If not, then what is the point?”_

 The point was that Anders was right. The point was that there was no going back, there was no fixing this. The point was that Hawke would rather have shouted and raged for a hundred more days than accept that with the quiet hopelessness that Anders already had.

 Maker, it was so late. It was too late. How could they have wasted so much time? Three years – three whole years out of Anders’ ten, and they’d lost it dancing around each other like stupid teenagers. Even after they’d finally given in to their feelings, even after Anders had become his lover… he’d still wasted so much time, letting it slip away between his fingers, spending it on other things – useless things – because he always thought there would be more time. He’d not see Anders for days at a time, putting him on a shelf like a toy he planned to come back to later, concentrating on silly errands and fun distractions and managing piles of money and treasure that  _he didn’t give a damn about._

 Why was he even still here, in Kirkwall? With his mother gone, there was nothing left to tie him here. Only his work as a Champion kept him within the city walls, a feeling of obligation to Kirkwall and its people – but in his heart he’d always thought that would be temporary, that one day it would end and he would move on. He’d thought of a peaceful estate in the countryside, a farm perhaps, overrun with chickens and with dogs to chase them around, with no politicians and no Templars and no gangs and no gossipy nobles –

 And with Anders beside him.

 He’d always thought there would be more time, that was all. There should have been more time.

  _Oh, Maker please,_   Hawke prayed. He hadn’t prayed in a long time, but he didn’t know what else to do. He would gladly have gone to the ends of Thedas for Anders – hunted all over the Vimmarck Mountains for the right rare flower, argued the Knight-Commander to a standstill, dug up Corypheus and punched him in the face – he would have done all that and more if it would have helped. But it wouldn’t help.  _Please, give me something. Give him something. It can’t end like this, it can’t, it just can’t._

 He was so lost in his own thoughts, numb within his own body, that he didn’t notice at first the gentle blue light playing over the stone ceiling. Not until a footstep sounded heavy on the marble stairs did Hawke start out of his reverie and look around.

 Anders stood at the top of the stairwell, glowing with an eerie internal light. He was wearing the clothes he’d gone to sleep in – his trousers and a thin, ratty undershirt – but he wore them as unselfconsciously as the armor of kings. “Justice,” Hawke said, letting out a breath.

 The spirit turned bright-fire eyes in his direction. “Yes,” he answered, his voice echoing from the stone ceiling. “Anders sleeps. But I wished to speak with you.”

 Hawke’s breath caught, and he tightened his arms around himself. “I don’t want to hear any more lies,” he growled.

 Justice frowned, and his voice had a distinctly offended huff to it. “I am Justice; I do not lie,” he said. He took another step down the stairs, bringing the light closer. “Anders has told you the truth – as far as he knows it.”

 Hawke looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”

 Justice descended the rest of the way down the stairs, and walked over the stand beside Hawke. The way he carried himself was stiff and awkward, as though he didn’t quite know what to do with his arms and hands if he didn’t have a weapon in them. He ended up mirroring Hawke’s posture, arms folded over his chest, and looked out the narrow windows as he spoke.

 "Before Anders and I merged I spent time at Vigil’s Keep, in the body of Kristoff, himself a former Grey Warden,“ Justice said. "I read much and spoke much with the Senior Wardens, in an attempt to understand the circumstances of my hosts.

 "It is the Taint that shortens the life of the Wardens, even as it gives them the abilities they so desperately require to battle the Darkspawn. The Taint allows them to hear the Call of the Old Gods… and over time it corrupts their blood, until they must follow it or degenerate entirely. Such you saw in the Deep Roads.”

 Hawke covered his face with his hands, grinding his palms into his eyes as if in doing so he could block out the image of Larius:  rotting, mumbling, diseased and dying. “So Anders is… is going to become one of those things?” he choked, voice shaking. He could picture it, he couldn’t  _stop_  picturing it, until he wanted to dig his eyes out of his own head to make the image stop. Anders with his soft fine hair falling out, his freckled skin blotched and sloughing away, his beautiful honey eyes filmed and blind. “Oh, Maker… is that why you’re telling me this? Telling me that I have to let him go, for his own good? That I have to be a good lover, pack him a lunch and wave good-bye when he goes off to the Deep Roads to die?”

  _“No.”_ The word was forceful, and Hawke could hear the growl, could almost hear the scowl. “What I am telling you is that I… do not believe this will happen to Anders.”

 Hawke jerked his head up, blinking stars out of his vision. “…What?” he managed to say. “But… the other Wardens…”

 "Do not share a body with a spirit of the Fade,“ Justice interrupted him. "I, too, can feel the corruption in Anders’ blood. I too can hear the Call in him, as I heard its echo in Kristoff.

 "But in Anders, I do what I can to hold it back. When the Call sings in him, I quiet it; when the corruption seeks to grow, I purge it. In the five years that I have been with Anders, the Taint has not spread within him beyond the point where it was when we first joined. I will continue to fight it as long as I can.”

 Hawke stared at Justice, disbelief warring with hope for control of his mouth. “You can… y-you can…”

 Justice inclined his head in a nod. “The Wardens give their life for a noble cause, guarding the world from the evils of the darkspawn. It is  _unjust_ that the reward for their service should be degeneration and painful death. If I could, I would save them all; since I cannot, I will at least save this one.” His voice quietened, and he looked away into the shadows of the darkened room. “I do not know if it is unjust – selfish – of me to be glad, that the one I can save is also the one that I love.”

 In the last few moments, Hawke had forgotten to breathe. It wasn’t until he tried to start again, a deep shuddering rush of air, that he realized he was crying. With joy, with relief, with painfully sudden hope. “Does… does Anders know?” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Why didn’t he say so earlier?”

 Justice’s expression deepened into a scowl. “You know he cannot hear me,” he grumbled. “I cannot speak to him except through you – or others, but there have been none that I could trust. Will you tell him?”

 "Yes,“ Hawke said. "Yes – I’ll tell him. First thing tomorrow, I promise.”

 "Then we will return to bed. Anders is exhausted from our ordeal in the Deep Roads.“ Justice turned back to the stairwell, the light shifting and flickering as he moved. "Rest well, Garrett Hawke.”

 Hawke stayed long after Justice had gone upstairs, still staring out the narrow window-slit at the glimpse of sky beyond. Dawn grew on the horizon until it burst into his eyes and he could see it now, he could see it all – a farm, a rambling country house bathed in warm sunlight, surrounded by tall grasses with their tops browning in the sun. Chickens, in a pen off to one side of the yard, and a faithful mabari hound to keep foxes away – and a cat, a strong clever mouser, winding its way across the farmyard to drink from the milk put out on the doorstep.

 A road, a nearby village – neighbors who would come by sometimes for help healing their ills, their little mundane injuries that came with a life of honest labor, to tend their elderly and birth their children, a healer known and appreciated and honored for his gentle service. There would be no snobby, entitled Hightown neighbors, no seedy cut-throat gangs, no politics, no Templars at all. Just peace.

 And Anders would be with him.

 There would be time, now. Hawke would make sure of it. He would not let any of the dangers of Kirkwall take Anders away from him – not now, after everything, not now that he’d been given a second chance. Justice had offered them the gift of  _time –_   and Hawke would make sure that it would not be squandered.

 

 

* * *

 

 ~end.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Hepler's comments in the WoT trivia that Justice might be able to hold back Anders' Calling.


End file.
